Wednesday, July 25, 2007

NYT reported After more than eight years in a Libyan prison, convicted of deliberately infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor stepped off a French presidential plane to freedom here on Tuesday.

That is good news. The charges were absurd, but I am glad they are free.

The charge had been widely dismissed abroad as absurd. The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, had accused the six medical workers, who were said to have been tortured, of acting on the orders of American and Israeli intelligence agencies to destabilize the Libyan state.

Total stupidity, but at least he did not say they were insulting Islam.

Their liberation, through French intervention and payments of hundreds of millions of dollars in total to the families of the infected children, brings to an end a bizarre and tortuous episode that opens the way for Libya to improved political ties and lucrative trade deals with Europe. Human rights groups assailed the bargain, saying Libya should not be rewarded for taking hostages and releasing them for a price.

Would these human rights group have preferred it if the medical workers were still in prison in Libya?